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A hacker claims to have obtained troves of personal information on 1 billion Chinese citizens from Shanghai police in what tech experts say would be one of the largest data breaches in history, if true.
The anonymous internet user, known as “ChinaDan,” posted on the hacker forum Breach Forums last week, offering to sell more than 23 terabytes of data for 10 bitcoins, equivalent to about $200,000.
“In 2022, the Shanghai State Police (SHGA) database was leaked. The database contains a large amount of data and information on billions of Chinese citizens,” the post said.
“The database contains information about 1 billion Chinese citizens and billions of case records, including: names, addresses, places of birth, ID numbers, mobile phone numbers, all crime/case details.”
Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the post.
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The Shanghai government and public security bureau did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Reuters was also unable to reach the self-proclaimed hacker ChinaDan, but the post was widely discussed over the weekend on Chinese Weibo and WeChat social media platforms, and many users feared it could be real.
The hashtag “data breach” on Weibo was blocked on Sunday afternoon.
Kendra Schaefer, head of technology policy research at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China, said in a post on Twitter that “it’s hard to parse out the truth from the rumor mill”.
If the material the hackers claimed was from the Ministry of Public Security, it would be bad for “multiple reasons,” Schaefer said.
“Most obviously, this would be one of the largest and most serious breaches in history,” she said.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said Monday that the cryptocurrency exchange has beefed up user verification processes after the exchange’s threat intelligence detected the sale of records belonging to the Asian country’s 1 billion residents on the dark web.
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He tweeted that the leak may have been due to “a bug in the deployment of Elastic Search by (government) agencies,” without specifying whether he was referring to the Shanghai police case. He did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The hackers’ claims come as China vows to tighten protections for online user data privacy, instructing its tech giants to ensure more secure storage after public complaints about mismanagement and abuse.
Last year, China passed new laws on how personal information and data generated within its borders are handled.
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